News, 1/21/2014

Foreign missions processed a record of more than 1.5 million visa applications in 2013

Press release 10/2014
15 January 2014

In 2013, Finland’s missions abroad processed a total of 1,569,851 visa applications, which is an all-time record high. In 2012, the number of visas processed was 1,391,860. The amount of visa applications processed increased by 13 per cent. The number of visa applications to be processed has been growing strongly over the past six years. In 2007, 644,800 visa applications were processed.

More than 95 per cent of all visa applications filed at foreign missions were processed by Finland’s four diplomatic missions in Russia. As in previous years, the single biggest recipient of visa applications was the Finnish Consulate General in St. Petersburg, which processed 1,204,667 applications. The year before, the number of applications processed in St. Petersburg was 1,030,948, which means an increase of 17 per cent. The Consulate General in St. Petersburg is also the office with the highest number of Schengen country visas processed in Russia. The number of applications also increased slightly in the two other offices of the Consulate General of St. Petersburg, in Petrozavodsk and Murmansk. In Moscow, 142,949 visa applications were processed, up two per cent from the year before.

Other Finnish missions that received more than 5,000 visa applications in 2013 were the embassy in Kiev (16,804), the Consulate General in Shanghai (7,840) and the embassies in Bangkok (7,793), Beijing (7,029) and New Delhi (6,170). The number of visa applications rejected by Finnish missions abroad in 2013 totalled 14,197, which is around 0.9 per cent of the total number of applications received.